Psycho/Somatic: Mental Health as a Bodily Concern

A recent BBC article (other news sites are available, and most of them are better) with the potentially slightly alarmist title ‘I was disabled by my mind’ offers an important insight into the way in which mental health issues can spill over and manifest in physical or somatic symptoms. One of the major misconceptions of mental health [...]

Who Needs Faith to be Healed?

Faith healing is a practice as old as faith itself. But what place does it have in today’s world, where science and medicine have a stronger evidence base for providing effective treatments? People still invest a lot of time, money and effort in faith healers, as this story on the BBC website demonstrates. What it [...]

A Better Alternative to Alternative Medicine

Last night I watched a BBC documentary about a young ‘psychic surgeon’, who travelled around the UK to perform healing on patients with a range of diagnosed conditions, from alzheimer’s to brain tumours, gall stones to chronic pain. As a devout sceptic of all things mystical, I was decidedly troubled by the seeming ease with [...]